1. each submission has a vote icon.
2. votes are made by clicking on the icon of a chosen submission and voters will be asked to give their email address.
3. an email will then be sent to the provided email address where voters will be asked to confirm their vote, directing them back to the website.
4. only one vote from an email address will be counted.
To inform your choice you may want to read some of the recent press coverage for Strip Appeal:
Please join Dr. Rob Shields and myself for the announcement of winners for Strip-Appeal in the Atrium, Enterprise Square, 10230 Jasper Ave, Monday Jan. 16 2012, 5-7pm.
Snacks are being provided from Nomad Food Truck and wine from Devine Wines (cash bar).
As Postdoctoral Fellow at the City-Region Studies Centre I am currently curating an international design competition to re-imagine the strip mall.
News about the competition recently made the front page of the Edmonton Journal where they covered a submission to the competition by Industrial design student Larry Kwok and collaborator Jim Morrow who have come with an inventive model to diversify the current retail model for strip malls by recycling shipping containers:
Initiated by the City-Region Studies Centre, University of Alberta, Strip Appeal is an ideas design competition intended to stimulate creative design proposals for the adaptive reuse of small-scale strip-malls (or mini-malls).
In many neighborhoods across North America, small 5-8 store strip-malls, once anchors of local retail activity, have become today’s suburban blights: envisioned as community hubs of consumption and services, many of these places are being abandoned, becoming underutilized and dilapidated as the services move out of local neighborhoods in favour of larger-scale shopping districts serving greater catchment areas.
We ask: how might the small-scale strip be reinvented and redeveloped to local advantage?
With creative thinking and design experimentation, we believe there are many ways to transform these ever-present yet ailing built forms to promote walkability, sustainability and community as suburban experience.
The winning and shortlisted submissions will form a travelling exhibit, with accompanying bookwork, that will tour planning departments and architecture/design schools across North America.
The deadline is Nov 30th 2011.
For more info and to download a competition brief visit the Strip Appeal website www.strip-appeal.com
I recently gave a presentation at the RGS-IBG annual conference where I creatively presented a series of 35mm slides from my dad’s 1972 mountaineering expedition to Cape Farewell, Greenland. I gave the presentation in a session entitled “Me, my self and the archive: reflections on encounters and enchantments”.
Entitled “Remotely Sensing Cape Farewell” in the work I explored how my dad’s explorer impulses (he also went to Everest and all over the Alps) shaped my ‘geographical Imagination’ (the overall theme of the conference).
My presentation was framed by the question: How do you attempt to value and disclose the legacy of life lived?
This question has both personal and academic significance for me, as in one sense it is an attempt to deal with the loss of my father and in another it is a strategy employed to open up space for consideration of non-representational responses to the use of archives.
Nigel Thrift posits that such a question ‘requires a consideration of the politics of what Phelan (1993) calls the ‘unmarked’, that, is, an attempt to find, value, and retain what is not marked as ‘here’, yet palpably still reverberates; invisible dust still singing, still dancing’. (Thrift 2000a: 214)
Derek McCormack argues a modified understanding of remote sensing can be employed as a means to sense and make sensible the persistence and circulation of these traces. Revisiting a specific episode in my father’s life – his 1972 Greenland (Cape Farewell) mountaineering expedition – provided a vehicle through which to investigate and expand upon McCormack’s claim.
The expedition could be revisited through those things my father kept and left behind relating to it, including: several boxes of photographic slides, correspondence letters, maps and a report of the expedition. In my hands these remains have become generative of an afterlife, what McCormack describes as: “a distributed field of affective materials that circulates through specific configurations of object, text, and image” (McCormack 2010: 37).
Working through this field can best be undertaken, according to McCormack, as a modified kind of remote sensing, “where remote sensing is understood not so much as a technology of distanced, elevated image capture but as a set of mobile and modest techniques for sensing the unsettling geographies of the spectral” (ibid).
Enacting this process of remote sensing, however, requires the cultivation of distinctive modes of narration according to McCormack. In my presentation at the Royal Geographical Society I therefore aimed to creatively engage with and re-present the affective remains of the expedition in order to both suggest non- representational responses to the use of archives and to explore our ability, or perhaps inability, to elaborate loss.
The presentation aptly took place in the Royal Geographical Society’s Foyle Reading Room which houses it maps and archives. The RGS is the institutional home of the expedition presentation, where so many of Britain’s celebrated ‘hero explores’ have returned to to regale the triumphs and hardships of their journeys by lantern slide. Rather than speak (something I felt unable to do and, more to the point, that words would simply fall short), and following in the tradition of the lantern slideshow – I decided to create two visual presentations:
One using the original 35mm slides from the expedition, which were projected using an old-school slide projector.
An another series of slides that I produced: here I projected quotes from key figures in the history of academic geography over the map showing the route of the expedition. These quotes were from key figures in the discipline of geography who write about and critique cultures of exploration.
My dad and his fellow party members went to Greenland to climb and name ‘virgin’ peaks in the Cape Farewell area. While I wanted to celebrate my dad’s influence on my geographical imagination, as an academic geographer my discipline has trained me to be critical of the imperialist impulses of the ‘hero explorer’. To explore this tension (daughterly love and academic training), instead of doing an expected academic written critique to be read aloud, I decided to make two visual projections (the slideshow and the quotes) to be played in tandem together.
While it impossible to recreate the experience I created in the RGS Foyle Reading Room, I have put together two mock-ups of the two projections that ran side-by-side in the RGS presentation:
The actual 35mm slideshow:
The series of quotes:
Their running time is not in sync but hopefully you’ll get the idea.
With the two visual presentations I played a sound composition – Energy Field – by the sound artist Jana Winderen that is made up of recordings of she made using a hydrophone while visiting Greenland. I made a short presentation for the RGS online Gallery that also included snippets of Jana’s sound recordings which gives you an idea of how visuals and sound worked together:
Click here to go directly to the RGS online Gallery
By way of introduction to the presentation I produced a postcard for which the geographer (and my ex-supervisor) Hayden Lorimer contributed the opening statement. These are presented at the top of this post.
The presentation was dedicated to my dad, Jim Patchett (1950-2010).
As part of my Strip Mall activities I am currently researching innovative strategies for the adaption and reuse of built forms which have fallen out of use.
One excellent example I want to bring to your attention is the repurposing, or ‘making safe’, of St Peter’s Seminary in Glasgow, Scotland.
Image: NVA, Glasgow
The building was designed in the 1960s by modernist architects Gillespie, Kidd and Coia for the Archdiocese of Glasgow. It was used for training priests, but after being used by the Catholic church for only a few years, the building fell into disuse and is now a famed ruin and place of pilgrimage for graffiti artists and urban explorers.
Image: NVA, Glasgow
Despite being regarded as one of the most significant modernist buildings in the UK, it has fallen into a near-ruinous state with previous plans to renovate the building coming to nothing.
NVA ( a Scottish arts charity interested in a non-gallery based democratisation of presentation) is now beginning a two-year fundraising plan to raise the £10m needed to complete the development of the building and the surrounding area.
NVA’s vision for St Peter’s (and its surrounding woodland estate) is for it to become an integrated public rural artwork, accessed on foot. The site would be partially restored, stabilising the structure to make a safe living ruin, and the internal spaces and woodland would be utilised in a variety ways to host extensive artist-led cultural and educational programmes.
The charity’s plans to convert the Seminary building into an ‘intentional Modernist ruin’ is particularly innovative because it is only a ‘partial’ restoration as NVA explains:
“Acknowledging the recent history of the building as a ruin whilst making safe what is left by partially restoring the internal spaces within an exposed and strengthened superstructure, St Peter’s seminary will adapt and evolve incrementally within its shrouded setting.”
Essentially they are turning architectural entropy into a form of heritage strategy. Angus Farquhar, the creative director of NVA, notes the approach has been inspired by similar restoration projects such as the Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park in Germany (where a former industrial wasteland has been transformed over more than 10 years into parkland) and the El Matadero in Madrid, a former slaughterhouse that is now a cultural centre.
NVA’s longterm hope for the site is that it will:
“both function as a unified artwork combining the built and un-built environment in a walked narrative and work with academics from different disciplines to advance the site as a long term source of knowledge and inspiration that will be shared with wider audiences through the experiential teaching within a working and productive landscape.”
NVA recently presented a programme of public events, entitled To Have and To Hold, responding to the themes of restoration and reuse of our built heritage at La Biennale di Venezia’s 2010 International Architecture Exhibition.
NVA delegates also debated the future of St Peter’s and their plans for the site in a discussion session. They reconnected with the radical roots of Ruskin’s nineteenth century conservation theories, and their influence on the great architect Carlo Scarpa and his remarkable fusion of ancient and modern elements in schemes, still seen around Venice.
The discussions were documented in the following film:
The contributors that took part in the discussion were:
Gordon Murray, Gordon Murray Architects/Strathclyde University (Moderator)
Adam Sutherland, Grizedale Arts
Alan Pert, Nord Architects
David Cook, Wasp’s Artists Studios
Ed Hollis, Edinburgh College of Art
Gerrie van Noord, Freelance Project Manager
Hayden Lorimer, Glasgow University
Henry Mckeown, JM Architects
Moira Jeffrey, Scotland on Sunday
Murray Grigor, film maker
Rolf Roscher, ERZ Ltd
Tilman Latz, Latz + Partner Architects
Ranald MacInnes, Historic Scotland
Angus Farquhar, NVA
Luke Alexander also produced a great short film about St Peter’s for his project called “Concrete Britain”, which looked at the history (and present state) of Modernist architecture in Britain. In the film original film footage from Space and Light (1972, dir. Murray Grigor) is combined with new footage of the building in its now derelict state.
I am currently researching the architecture and aesthetics of Strip Malls for the design competition I am launching in collaboration with the City-Region Studies Centre (see previous post for details).
The design competition will ask for submissions to reinvent the strip mall. We are looking for innovative strategies for the adaptation and reuse of this abundant yet ailing building stock.
To understand the challenge I went on a photographic field trip around Edmonton to find some ‘sites of potential’…
“The suburbs can go toward death – or life. We will have decay if we do the same old things. We need to reimagine a sustainable future. Car-centered development is going to kill us. We need to work for walkable neighborhoods and beware of washed up shopping malls, and decaying strip malls that sit empty.”
– Marvin Malecha, Dean of N.C. Design College speaking at the 8th Annual Urban Design Forum Feb 2011.
Abandoned Strip-Mall. Photo: Benjamin Simpson.
I have recently started a new position as Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta’s City-Region Studies Centre. In this position I will be curating a speculative design competition reimagining the potential of the strip-mall.
In many neighborhoods across North America, small 5-8 store strip-malls, once anchors of local retail activity, have become today’s suburban blights: envisioned as community hubs of consumption and services, many of these places are being abandoned, becoming underutilized and dilapidated as the services move out of local neighborhoods in favour of larger-scale shopping districts serving greater catchment areas.
This speculative design competition, and accompanying exhibition, intends to stimulate creative new visions for the rejuvenation of small-scale strip-malls that line the streets of virtually every suburban zone in Canada. Strip-malls and plazas have long played an important role in Canadian communities by providing neighborhoods with valuable services and products. However ‘big-box’ retail sites are increasingly making the strip-mall obsolete – often leaving strip sites either partially or totally derelict.
How might we re-think and newly envision the potential of the strip-mall (a building stock of which we have in abundance in Canada)? With creative thinking, collective energy and design innovation, I believe there are many ways to transcend the non-descript status quo of the strip-mall—ways that are aesthetically compelling, economically feasible and communally smart.
This design competition and exhibition aims to inspire city planners, developers and communities both here in Edmonton and elsewhere to rethink the suburbs.
While organizing the competition I have also been developing a unique method to conduct walking interviews with people to gather their “suburban memories” in order to produce a short film for the exhibition.
For Suburbia Interviewed I am developing a unique walking interview technique to record Edmontonian’s “suburban memories” as well as their future reimaginings of suburbia.
In my practice as an ‘experimental geographer’ I am interested in trying out experimental ways of recording people’s understandings of their local environment. Following the practice of Rescue Geography I am particularly interested in using mobile techniques and locative media for collecting stories and opinions from people whilst actually in the place they’re talking about.
One of the techniques I have been refining (with the guidance of John Acorn) is the use of walking interviews, using a Go-Pro Hero HD camera and sound recording equipment, where I actually get people to give me a guided tour of the area while recording them. I am particularly interested in using this technique to investigate people’s relationship with suburban environments.
Here are the results of recent experiments to refine the technique:
This clip shows us testing out the best mic to use to capture both the interview and the environmental sound at Laurier Heights strip-mall in Edmonton:
{more video coming soon!}
I will use this technique to interview and collect Edmontonian’s ‘suburban memories’ in the actual places that evoke these, and then ask them how they would like to experience these places in the future. The outcomes of these recordings would be presented as a short film in the exhibition.
Presented in a city (Edmonton), whose identity is forever entwined with suburban development, I will use Suburbia Interviewed to invite visitors to imagine intriguing recalibrations of the suburbs in 21st century form… what will be the future experience of suburbia?
Predictions of the suburbs demise are premature to say the least. Suburbs are the nexus of North American life, have been for decades, and will certainly remain so. Suburbs are where the majority of Canadians today, and in the future, live, work, shop, create, consume, recreate, educate and, perhaps most importantly, procreate.
Suburban population, business and job growth each outpace those of cities, have done so for decades and will likely continue to do so. Retrofitting suburbs of any density so that residents can shop, obtain services and work all within a mile or two of their home is key to making the suburbs more sustainable. The strip-mall site offers a unique opportunity to address these issues.
In the following TED talk talk Ellen makes just this point.
The author of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, Dunham-Jones fires the starting shot for the next 50 years’ big sustainable design project: retrofitting suburbia. To come: Dying malls rehabilitated, dead “big box” stores re-inhabited, parking lots transformed into thriving wetlands.
Andriko Lozowy, photographer and sociologist, recently took a series of photographs – Reflecting on Dead Birds – of the exhibition Fashioning Feathers…that I recently curated at the FAB gallery, Edmonton.
The photographs act as a virtual tour of the exhibition as well as highlighting the the juxtaposition of the artworks of Andrea Roe and Kate Foster with the feathered hats and trimmings from the Clothing and Textiles Collection, University of Alberta.
Kate Foster’s work THE BIOGRAPHY OF A LIE responds obliquely, imagining that birds had access to the materials and crafts of the Plume Boom. What would they do? She turns found and scavenged materials into a body jewellery series for some bird species that were almost made extinct at the hight of ‘feather fashions’.
Andrea Roe’s video work Kingfisher delicately records the taxidermy process, where skin and feathers are rearranged to appear alive again. Her other work shown in the exhibition – Intimate – also gets under the skin, as human and bird exchange form as “great tit”.
To see the full series of photographs Andriko took (including shots of the installation process) click here.
To see reviews of the show navigate to the Fashioning Feathers Blog.
As promised here is the documentation of the talk given by Kate Foster at GSS giving examples of collaborative creative work on environmental change from art and geography (happened on June 23, 2011).
In the talk Kate Foster invites responces from interdisciplinary artist Perdita Phillips and geographers Hayden Lorimer and myself, Merle Patchett (see previous post for video documentation of our contributions).
In combination, we offer different experiences of how artists and academic researchers can forge alliances. We broach the question of the different criteria by which we can count success.
You can download a word document summarising this talk and images, with weblinks as relevant, by clicking on this link: KateFosterTalkGSS
Guy Maddin, "Horse heads frozen at the Forks," from "My Winnipeg," 2007. Photo by Jody Shapiro.
This summer, la maison rouge (Paris) is launching a new series of exhibitions focusing on the arts scene in major provincial cities. The first of these cities will be Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba in Canada.
At a time when the art world is said to be heading for globalization, La Maison Rouge is taking a closer look at centers of creativity with a little-known yet thriving arts scene, whose artists’ work is infused with the city and its territory, history and myths.
Winnipeg is a prime example of how geographical location can shape artistic production. Long, harsh winters prompt artists to get together in their studios to work; the Winnipeg property market is more open than in Toronto or Montreal, giving artists access to spacious studios at reasonable rents.
Public and private bodies such as the Manitoba Museum, the Plug-In, a university arts center (Gallery One One One) and a quality international art magazine (Border Crossings) show art at local level, and promote and develop contemporary art and culture in the city.
Although the international art world is still unfamiliar with some of Winnipeg’s artists, others have caught the eye of critics and curators while continuing to make a rich contribution to the local scene.
Artists, their work and their cities form a close-knit and interactive network. Artists are inspired by the cities in which they live and, in return, the work they produce helps define the region’s identity. This identity is then carried in films, music, literature, performance art and exhibitions, conveying these artists’ vision around the globe.
The works shown at la maison rouge are nonetheless works in their own right. This series of exhibitions will not show works purely in relation to their geographical environment: its purpose in setting them in their context is to help the observer understand what triggered their creation.
Royal Art Lodge, The Red River, 2008. Courtesy Folkwang Museum Essen, Allemagne
In My Winnipeg “visitors discover a fertile and creative artistic community, steeped in history and legend—the vast prairies of northern Canada, the Cree and Métis First Nations communitites, the world’s coldest city, plagued by floods and, in summer, by mosquitos—but also a certain sense of despair tinged with humor, inherited from the immigrants who settled in the province during the 19th and 20th centuries.
From filmmaker Guy Maddin to artist Marcel Dzama, from The Royal Art Lodge collective to painter and video artist Kent Monkman, from photographers William Eakin and Diana Thorneycroft to artist Sarah Anne Johnson, together with Paul Butler’s collages, Jon Pylypchuk’s dolls and Shary Boyle’s sculptures: various generations of talented artists to be discovered by the public.
Painting, video, installation, photography, performance art, film and music: all media are included so as to propose the most apposite representation of the city.”
I want to bring to your attention a presentation by environmental artist Kate Foster at Glasgow Sculpture Studios that I, and fellow geographer Hayden Lorimer, will be contributing to on Thursday 23 June 1-2 pm (UK time) as we would appreciate your company and viewpoint.
Kate’s talk will continue a cross-disciplinary theme that has been developing in the Thursday talks at the Glasgow Sculpture Studios, most recently on art-sci projects like the Clipperton Project and Cape Farewell which are instigating cultural responses to climate change and the biosphere.
Kate will be talking about working as an artist on ecological issues, in combination with academic research. With the theme ‘changeable places’ she’ll give snapshots of work in Ecuador, South Africa, and the Scottish Southern Uplands.
Changable Places also titles an online forum (initiated by Kate and fellow artist Jethro Brice) that offers a space for artists, activists and geographers to share work about engaging with places with uncertain prospects in terms of land use, biodiversity and climate change. The project began with the idea that if you are immersed in a setting it helps to share your sense of that place. Newcomers can become interested in these layered connections – leading to discussion about what to communicate and how we engage with the setting’s future. Particular nuances of place can be viewed within broader landscapes.
The project arose out of conversations between environmental activists, artists, geographers and writers, and this is where Kate was interested in getting input from Hayden Lorimer and myself.
Having both collaborated with Kate in the past, she asks us to introduce work we have done on ‘changeable places’ and to reflect on what we count as success? Whose critique and criteria do we seek?
Kate recorded our contributions in advance on sykpe (as we were both unable to attend Glasgow Sculpture Studios in person) and we talk variously about experimental geography, making ‘small stories’, and creating networks for engaging with anthropogenic environmental change:
